Who is Hannah Lee Duggan?
Hannah Lee Duggan is a content creator that grew her following by documenting her life and adventures living in a van and a small cabin. She started her Youtube channel before van-life really took off, and she quickly became a van-life icon.
Duggan’s Youtube Journey Began With a Van Tour.
While Duggan can be seen in this video as a little scattered, she is also seen as highly relatable. The audience can see in this video that she films her videos by hand on an iphone. Throughout this video, there is this palpable feeling of “if she can do this, I can do this.” This is one of the many reasons that Duggan became a van-life icon.
Her Nomadic Experiences Before Van-Life.
In her About Me page, Duggan says that she is a nomad. She said that when she turned 18 she started working on a cruise ship as a stewardess. This enabled her to sail around the New England Islands, the Hudson River and the Florida Coast.
She said that she “learned a lot about working hard and still somehow finding the time to enjoy where you are.”
Duggan’s journey led her to Oakland, CA; where she lived with a friend for six months. She said that after visiting Los Angeles she decided to move there. She has said in her videos and in her About Me page, that this was a really rough time. She started to get modeling jobs and acting gigs. Her About Me page says that she can be seen in the background of Grey’s Anatomy S12: E4.
Duggan eventually saved up enough money to travel. She said that she began in Paris, France. Then she said she met someone outside of Rome and hitchhiked with Canadian guys through Venice. She then went from Zurich, Switzerland to England, where she said that she slept on the floor of her friend’s dorm for a week. She said that she ended her trip in France with a 103F fever before heading back to LA with $6 in her bank account.
She said that LA became too expensive and she had to move back home to Minnesota. She started going to the University of Minnesota off and on.
“Between semesters (and sometimes mid-semester) I traveled to Hawaii, road tripped from New York to LA, spent two weeks in Costa Rica, danced around Colombia, and a last minute trip to Ireland and London,” said Duggan. “Most of these trips were spent in hostels/alone/with barely any money.”
Duggan traveled around until 2018, when she bought her van. She said that she spent many days scrolling through Craigslist, an online marketplace, until April 26, 2018 when she purchased her 2001 Ford Econoline Van. She posted a video talking about her conversion process on Youtube on July 9, 2019.
At this point in her journey, she had already posted several videos on Youtube and had a following. Her videos covered questions about van-life, fashion, her process becoming an egg donor and her many van-life adventures. She even gained a following on Twitter for her musings.
In 2020, Duggan was known for her fashion sense, ability to alter clothing, her van-life adventures and renovating her apartment. On Sept. 10, 2020, she released a video saying that she bought a cabin in the woods of Minnesota. She has released several videos since showing her extreme work ethic as she tackles renovating her cabin.
Over the entire course of her Journey, she has been known for being relatable, funny and eating a lot of spaghetti. She consistently is showing her hard work ethic and willingness to figure out how to do something.
Duggan’s journey in becoming an icon for Van-life had many turns. A big reason was that she started right before van-life got popular. Although her videos show that it was her personality and hard work that got her there.
